


Stolen Time

by osprey_archer



Category: Obernewtyn Chronicles - Isobelle Carmody
Genre: Consent Issues, F/M, Non-Consensual Kissing, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-06 21:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>An empath. Ariel was an empath. And with his joy singing in my veins, I could scarce remember to feel afraid.</i>
</p><p>Set during <i>The Stone Key</i>. Ariel captures Elspeth briefly on Herder Isle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stolen Time

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: nonconsensual kissing.

The flagstones of the Herder interrogation room dug into my cheek, hard and cold. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to gasp softly, for I did not want to draw the attention of whoever had interrupted the Three who were interrogating me, but it did no good. Hobnails clicked on the flagstones, and when I opened my eyes I was staring at a beautiful black boot.

Why had I been so foolish as to hide aboard the _Stormdancer_?

The boot shifted. "Did the One not say that I wanted this one saved for myself, Grisyl?" said a beautiful, oiled voice.

"The One said you were away," said Grisyl, his usual slyness clouded by fear.

"I was," said the voice, like honey. I tried to lift my head to look at him, but I lacked the strength, and my eyes were still blurry from Grisyl's interrogation by water. "But no longer. Give her to me, Grisyl, and I hope you have not ruined her."

"Of course not. I am quite skilled-"

"Skilled as a battleaxe," said the voice, swooping close to my ear, and then a beautiful face crowned in golden hair drifted into my vision.

It was Ariel.

I choked on the water still in my lungs. He smiled, face angelically beautiful with vicious triumph, and pulled me off the floor. I hung like a puppet, terror pounding through my head, even stronger than the headache from the demon band. At least he could not coerce me as long as I wore it.

"Like a battleaxe, when a knife blade is needed," he said, his breath hot in my ear.

Grisyl opened his mouth, but Ariel turned away in abrupt dismissal of the Three. The door clanged behind us as he dragged me from the room. His arm tightened around me and I felt a sudden sickening rush of joy and triumph, so fierce they made my head swim and my feet slip.

An empath. Ariel was an _empath_. And with his joy singing in my veins, I could scarce remember to feel afraid.

I had little time for it, anyway, for only a little way down the hall we stopped at a great door bound with iron strips, with a clapper shaped like a twisted lion. Ariel swung the clapper, and the door swung open.

The room was white: white high ceilings, white tile floors, two white and gold brocade armchairs that faced each other as if tensed to fight. Ariel swung me into a chair and stood behind me. His joy pulsed through me then died out, leaving me only with my sick terror.

I flinched as Ariel's long fingers appeared in the corners of my eyes, but he only unlocked the demon band and disentangled it gently from my hair. The removal of the tainted metal was as the removal of a physical weight. Tears of relief burned my eyes.

I tried to wipe them away on my shoulder. I would not let Ariel see me weep.

"There's a good Elf," said Ariel. I bit my lip against anger, slamming my shield into place, and somewhere above my head he laughed. "Tea, guildmistress?"

"No."

"Oh, Elspeth." His voice caressed my name. "This meeting isn't long enough for you to waste time being churlish." He swung around the chair, pinning my hands against the chair arms and leaning to close to my face. "Tea!" he shouted. Someone moved in the room behind me, but I scarcely noticed with Ariel's eyes locked on mine, his gaze as abrasive as the brocade scratching my wrists.

I tried to turn my head but, to my horror, found I couldn't look away. Waves of terror and satisfaction pounded through my head.

Suddenly something hard struck my lip, hard enough to hit my teeth. I gasped and my mouth filled with hot liquid. Tea. I clenched my teeth and throat against swallowing.

"Drink," said Ariel. "Swallow. Dribbling like that is disgusting."

Blunt, callused fingers - not Ariel's; someone was standing behind me - clenched under my jaw, tilting my head and the teacup so I must either swallow or choke. I swallowed, and Ariel stroked my arm. "Good Elspethelf," he said.

I felt a sudden surge of - adoration? He adored me, as a child adored a rag doll. I tried to summon my own revulsion for him, for the people he had killed, the torments he'd inflicted on Rushton, but my mind was cloudy as isinglass. He removed his binding hands, but I could barely lift my arms to try to push him away.

He swatted my hands aside as if they were no more than butterfly wings, and stole a kiss.

Giddiness and horror stole my breath. Almost without volition, I threw out a probe at his mind, only to have it ricochet off his shield, so violently that I gasped.

Ariel laughed and kissed me again, just a brush of lips before he sat back in his chair. He waved at the person behind me, and heavy dragging footsteps drifted away. I was shaking. My lips tingled from the kiss.

_What drugs had he given me?_

"Nothing to say, Elf?" said Ariel, relish in his tone.

His lips twisted into a cruel, beautiful smile. I wanted him to kiss me again. No; he wanted to kiss me again, and was projecting the emotion onto me, his smile deepening, lips opening, so I could see his perfect white teeth that seemed to grow into fangs and fill my vision-

"No bravado?" said Ariel, and my swimming head cleared. _What drugs?_ "Now that we meet in reality, and you have no kitten to hide behind?" I seethed at his dismissal of Maruman, but Ariel's voice floated onward. "You disappoint me, Elspethelf. I had hoped for more amusement."

"I am not your dancing bear, to talk for your amusement," I snapped.

He leaned back in his chair and smiled. The sun from the window caught on his hair and traced his cheekbone. "No, that's Rushton."

"Be silent!"

He laughed, leaning back so the sun fell along his neck and the strong line of his shoulders. He was beautiful. The sunlight ringed him like a halo, and for a moment I all but saw wings bursting from his shoulder blades. What was I thinking?

"I've been looking forward to this," said Ariel. "It's a pity this meeting will be so short, but so it must be."

Hope burst in me. Of course he could do a thousand terrible things in a short time. And he was probably lying, to give me hope only so he could break it. "Tragic," I said.

He laughed, and I could feel his adoration again. "Surely you can do better than that, guildmistress?"

I turned my face away. Quick as a fish, his adoration soured into fury, and he leaned across the gap between the chairs and slapped me. "Speak!"

I could taste blood from my lip. His anger hung through my mind like a miasma, and I felt a rush of shame for causing it. The shame drew out an anger of my own, that Ariel could so pervert the ability he shared with Dameon. "What would you have me say?"

"Why did you come here?" he asked. "I could scarcely believe my visions when I saw it."

An empath and...a futureteller? "It was a mistake."

"A relief," said Ariel. "I would hardly like to think my nemesis so foolish as to think she could bring down Herder Island on her own."

"You have never had any trouble believing that you could take the entire world onto your shoulders."

"But I've never had your ugly scruples," he said, with an elegant shudder, as if the thought of scruples disgusted him. "And, as you can see, I run Herder Island as I see fit. Those fools..." he dismissed the One and the Three with a wave of his hand. "Thinking Misfis are an abomination, when they are a weapon to be used."

"Not a weapon," I said. "Or only a weapon to fight for peace."

"Oh, Elspeth," he said, and his face softened into something like sorrow. He leaned forward, blue eyes wide and mesmerizing. "If only you had not been trapped at Obernewtyn, but been in the world - can you not see that you are meant for me?"

I would have said something tart. But though I could open my mouth, I could not gain enough strength in my lips or lungs to speak. I nearly panicked, but suddenly I felt calm. Ariel's empathy, again.

He had moved close to me again, when I had been battling my tongue. Now his hands slipped gently into the hair above my ears, scratching me as I might scratch Maruman. "Beautiful Elspethelf," he said, his blue eyes burning like a soldering fire, and he kissed me.

This was no quick kiss, as the other had been; this was a kiss with lips and tongue and teeth, terrible and sweet, that sent desire dancing down my veins as it had not since before Rushton's kidnapping.

Ariel's hands twisted in my hair, slender and strong as birch stems, cradling my head like an egg he could crack. My lips opened to his tongue. He bit my lower lip, pressing my head and his hands against the back of his chair. Sparks fluttered in my vision, white and red against the black sea of my closed eyelids; I could feel his lashes brushing mine as he pressed closer, lips parting, his breath almost sweet as I gasped it in. I could not get enough air.

I could feel his triumph and desire and passionate heat, pleasure too strong to be merely his. My body thrummed as a taut string as he pressed me into the chair, hands unclenching from my hair to drift over my shoulders, the sides of my breasts, hot as fire.

"Master?" said a voice.

Ariel drew away from me, resting his haunches on my knees and his hands against my thighs. They burned like brands through the cloth. "What?" he snapped.

"It is time."

I tried to turn my head toward the voice, but I could not. I might not have been able to see the speaker anyway, for my vision (now that I opened my eyes) was thin and vague, Ariel's profile as he looked left at the speaker only a gold and ivory blur. But it gnawed me that I knew the voice of this other speaker.

"Time?" said Ariel, his voice like cracked velvet. Suddenly, dizzyingly, his face drew away, a rush of breeze and a sense of exposure and lightness rushing over me. He was walking away; he walked beyond my field of vision. I felt so cold. "Time, Mika? Who told you to interrupt me, to tell me time?"

"You said it would spoil the plague you plan to visit on the land, Master, if we were loitered too long..."

The harsh crack. _A slap_ , I realized, the knowledge filtering through my brain like thunder after far-away lightning. "Do not presume to tell me what to do, Mika."

A whimper.

"But you are right," continued Ariel, reluctantly. "We must take her back, or those fools from Obernewtyn will not find her. Take her back, Mika. Wrest the knowledge of her absence from the minds of the Three."

"Should she forget, as well, Master?"

"She will. The drugs I gave her will make that sure."

They were in my line of sight again, two indistinct blurs: Ariel's lithe golden shape, and someone thin and dark-haired and cringing, who knelt before me and put his hands at his waist.

For just a moment, his face drew close enough that I could see it, and I would have cried out: for it was Domick.

But then he threw me over his shoulder, and my visions reeled and went black.

"Be gentle to her, Mika," said Ariel, his disembodied voice filling the room and my ears and my mind. "My nemesis, my beloved; I would not want her hurt at your hands."

And then my hearing, like my sight, fell into blackness, and my mind reeled away into unconsciousness.


End file.
